Entertainment

Hearst's Manilla Joins Race To Replace Paper Mail [INVITES]

Manilla, a "startup" fully owned by the Hearst Corporation, is launching a beta version of its free digital household account management system today — joining both mailing giant Pitney Bowes and VC-backed Doxo in the race to give companies a digital alternative for communicating with customers.

The platform allows users to access all of their bills, finances, travel rewards programs and subscriptions with one password. It allows partner organizations to cut off expensive paper statements and communications for Manilla users, paying the company just a fraction of what postage would cost for each document.

In 2009, businesses sent more than 37 billion paper bills, statements and other business transaction mail to customers, according to USPS's annual Household Diary Study. At direct costs of $0.60 to $0.80 per document, it's easy to see why companies think replacing paper mail will be a promising industry.

Pitney Bowes announced a similar "Digital Mailbox" called Volly in January. Unlike Manilla, Volly will be based on street addresses, which Pitney Bowes says will make it easier for its current connections — about 74% of high-volume mailers across the U.S. — to seamlessly integrate with their current mailing systems. Manilla has its own relationships with heavy mailers. Hearst also owns CDS global, a company whose services include printing and mail management for magazines (unsurprisingly a key category for Manilla at launch), consumer products and utility companies. Manilla's launch partners include Citi Cards and Comcast.

Pitney Bowes's platform will handle billing within the platform, which means companies that aren't partners aren't represented. Manilla sends users to company websites to pay bills, but allows them to skip the login process on those sites. Because the transaction doesn't take place within Manilla, users can pay bills from companies that Manilla hasn't partnered with.

The main difference between the two, according to Manilla CEO George Kliavkoff: "Pitney Bowes doesn't have a product, they have an announcement."

Startup Doxo doesn't have the same problem. The company, which recently secured a $10 million Series B round of financing, has been operating a household accounts organization platform since 2008. Like the Volly demo, the platform only allows users to pay bills with providers that have partnerships with the platform (otherwise, they need to upload statements and documents on their own). Currently Sprint and two utility companies are on board.

Which of these three players will eventually woo the most companies to their digital platforms is still up in the air, but its clear that some digital solution for business mail will emerge. Transactional mail volume has been plummeting for the past 15 years, and the post office is the first to acknowledge that businesses are apt to take this huge revenue stream elsewhere.

"Transactional mail, such as bill payments, has been eroded by competition from electronic media, primarily the Internet," the USPS 2010 annual report reads. "It is expected that, over time, bills and statements will increasingly follow payments to online services."

Mashable has 100 beta invitations available for readers. You can access the invite here, and enter the code Manilla4Mashable.

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